WHEELING — There’s a lot of emotion on Senior Night. There’s even more when Linsly and Wheeling Central get together, especially in boys’ soccer.

That was such the case Wednesday night on the artificial surface at the 16th Street Field as the Maroon Knights (13-2) blanked the visiting Cadets (8-7) by a 1-0 count.

“There’s always a lot of emotion when we play them. Tonight we were honoring the eight seniors who have gotten us to this point, so there was a big build up of emotion for those two reasons,” Wheeling Central head coach Brian Komorowski said. “It was a fun game.”

Sophomore JD Schoolcraft scored the lone goal of the match in the 32nd minute off a beautiful feed from Grady Mullin. Mullin nudged the ball through a pair of Linsly defenders at the top of the box and Schoolcraft avoided a charging goalkeeper Max Iglesias before putting the ball in the back of the net.

Wheeling Central’s Tino Sperlazza made the goal stand up as the junior keeper recorded six saves, with four coming in the first half when he was tested several times. It was the 11th shutout for Sperlazza.

“Tino played a good game. The back of our defense struggled early, but at the end they really pulled through. I think our center mids – Conor Wood and Maddox Ochap – played really strong games. We’ve only given up six goals all season and four of them came in our two losses,” Komorowski said. “Tino has played well for us all season.” Those losses came to Huntington St. Joe and Charleston Catholic, two perennial state powers.

Linsly head coach Greg Martin remarked, “One of these days we’ll figure out how to put one (goal) in the net on them. It’s been a little bit since we’ve scored on them. We tend to create chances but we’re not efficient enough in front of the goal.”

The Cadets did have a couple of golden scoring opportunities in the first half, but Sperlazza was up to the task each and every time.

Jamie Loudermilk’s blast from point-blank range to Sperlazza’s right knocked the goalkeeper backwards, but not before he punched the ball away with his fists in the 25th minute. Two minutes later, Felix Gelinas spun around a defender before sending a laser toward the net that Sperlazza dove to his left while batting the ball away.

“We put some pressure on them and we had the territory on the back end, but we didn’t create real clear, clear chances,” Martin added. “Soccer is a low incident sport. What happens in each box is the most important thing. Tonight they were able to make the most of their chances and we weren’t able to.”

Sperlazza barely got a finger on Augustin Fonseca’s shot from the top of the box in the 60th minute, but it was enough to re-direct the ball off the crossbar.

Iglesias was called upon to make just two saves – one in each half.

“We seem to be clicking right now. I just told the team that you want hard games like this because we’ve got some hard games coming down the road,” Komorowski added. “It wasn’t by any means perfect. There are definitely kinks in the armor that we need to fix and then go from there.”

Wheeling Central hosts North Marion on Saturday at 10 a.m. Linsly makes a trip to the eastern panhandle this weekend, playing Jefferson at 7 p.m. Friday and Washington at noon on Saturday.